Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Three men in Astoria.
I must have looked Muslim that day.
"Assssalaaamalaikum Sister."
“'slamlaikuuuum.”
I butchered it with the old Urdu pronunciation I just can’t shake and secretly don’t want to.

Small businesses generally remind me of camping stores. The shelves here were divided into squares holding Islamic gear- DVDs, headscarves, hadith quotation collections, full hadith collections so you can pick and choose like herbal remedies- the same books weighing down our shelves and hearts back home.

So anyway, a little girl was squatting beside a shelf of “Adam’s World” DVDs and asked “do you want a movie?” She appeared to have sprouted from one of the white bearded Arab men conversing with the African(-American?) cashier.
“Nooo, not today.” I was looking for the Arabic-English Dictionary.
“Do you speak Arabic?”
Even in speaking with a child, I was suspicious of her motives. Did she own the store? Would she judge me? Yessss.
“Maybe…no. No, I don’t. DO YOU?”
She gave me an “are you kidding me” face reminiscent of when I answer questions by pointing to my nose.
“What’s your name?” I asked and prepared my palate to pronounce it correctly.
I failed. It was so outlandish I can’t even remember it. At least eight vowels. All in a row like little starving children at a kitchen bench.
“I’m Shifa’ ” Naaailed it.
Now the cashier addressed me and the girl was promptly pulled away like an attentive Backstage Drama Club was at work.
“Ooooh I wish I was good like youuu.” He kept saying it.
I looked around. It seemed he was speaking to me.
“This is a dictionary.” It was green. Could’ve been a Qur’an, admittedly.
“Where are you from? I from Senegal. Born in Senegal, raised in France, lost in America.”
I laughed heartily, sincerely, and tried to start paying for my dictionary.
“You know, they charge $45 for this at the NYU bookstore, you’re getting gypped!”
I thought about a possible substitute word for “gyp.” Nothing came.
“You know though, I came to this country and just fell apart. Everythin’, everythin’. Before, I was so good. I was soooooo good. Doin’ everythin’ right. But I got like I thought I was better than everyone else. Now I see I’m just a man, like everyone. Now I have that humble- I can be humble because I’m lost.”
He enunciated his T’s in a pretty way.
“Yeah, it’s hard.” My Buffalo accent sounded disgusting after his monologue. I think sometimes I emphasize it just to gross myself out.
“And you know, sometimes my friends they ask me why I like the white women not the Black women I tell them I don’t knoooow, I just like the white women and they say what if there’s a white woman and a black woman and the black woman is prettier, watchu gonna pick I say okaaaaaaay the black woman. Hehe.”
“So really you just like beautiful women.”
I’m not sure if he understood my accent.
“…I wish I was good like you.”
I looked down at my paid-for dictionary. My dictionary.

What ever happened to the boys? The sons of that guy in Bryant Park I met last summer when Samia couldn’t find me at the movie. I heard him speaking Arabic on the phone and got all excited and said something about it and he asked me why I was studying Arabic all the way over there in Morocco. “Why not in New York- there are more Arabs here than Lebanon!”
“Lebanon is small,” I replied.
“I have two sons. Both of them can teach you Arabic- for free.”
I thought about his proposition. “At the same time?”
It was a joke. I wouldn’t say he eyed me wearily, but he definitely eyed me.
In any case, I don’t think he replied.